


I Could Teach You

by skampe



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Creampuff Week, F/F, minor implied alcohol abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skampe/pseuds/skampe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a time before that Carmilla taught a pretty girl to waltz. </p>
<p>For Day 4 of Creampuff Week: Blame it on the alcohol and waltzing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Could Teach You

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Anything you recognise belongs to the people who are paid for it. 
> 
> This is my interpretation of a time in Carmilla's past, if it conflicts with any other information you should just ignore that.
> 
> Enjoy!

She’d never even had a drink when she was alive. She was a good girl, a safe and steady girl, a girl who thought that if she could keep her wits about her she could make it through life unscathed. She couldn’t even make it through life. 

She awoke with two holes in her neck and an inhuman craving and an emptiness which grew into a depression that filled the new spaces inside her soul. They said it would pass. The others, they said that you got used to missing the life that used to glow inside of you, that eventually you forgot what loss felt like.

So she killed and she ran and she drank every bottle she could find until maybe she could feel like she wasn’t still lying in that crypt letting the dust of the graves bury her. She did whatever her mother told her, had no wish to fight back or consideration over whether she even should. 

Until one day her mother pushed her out of a carriage and into that house and she met Ell.

All too suddenly Carmilla’s world expanded, and the pressure in her head and her chest and her stomach fell away. She found herself stealing into Ell’s father’s study to tuck the quarter bottle of whiskey under her arm, wanting not to swig from the crusted neck but to giggle between nips with the girl whose sweet pink lips had never tasted something forbidden. 

It was late at night and they sat on the floor in their nightgowns with their backs against Ell’s bed. The floorboards were cold but their bodies were warm from the alcohol, and their sides pressed together shared the heat between them. Carmilla felt impulsive, high on the persuasion of human instinct rather than that of the beast she had felt for so long. She pulled Ell up and circled an arm around her slight waist.

‘We should have music.’

Ell looked at her strangely, but with the fondness of watching a child play in the mud; endearing but she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do such a thing. ‘We have no music, not in here at least.’

‘Then we’ll make our own.’ 

Carmilla joined her right hand to Ell’s left and lifted them. She started humming. Ell giggled and it made Carmilla’s lips quirk up and she pulled the other girl closer to her. Ell’s face was flushed, from the drink or the contact she didn’t know, but it was more beautiful than any sight she could recall.

‘Do you know how to waltz?’ she asked softly.

Ell lifted her head to gaze into Carmilla’s eyes. ‘Vaguely. I can’t say I’ve ever payed it too much attention. Nobody has given me the desire.’

Carmilla smiled, big and careless and she saw it reflected in the way Ell’s eyes seemed to melt. ‘I’ll teach you.’

She taught her the three beats, over and over as she hummed something simple, a song that came from a corner of her mind. She led Ell around her bedroom, the other girl falling easily into step and hypnotised instead by her friend’s shining eyes and soft voice.

‘You know it so well,’ Ell said, her voice stiff.

Carmilla leant closer to speak into her ear. ‘I do enjoy balls. The scandalous looks from the old women when you are pressed closely to another girl and moving as one. It’s oh so fun.’

She heard Ell gulp and couldn’t help her smirk. When she pulled back their faces were barely inches apart and Ell’s panted breaths puffed unevenly against her dry lips. She waited, just a second, until Ell was the one who rocked forward and brushed their lips together.

It was to be Carmilla’s only taste. It was all wrong, she wanted to change it, but her mother was firm and the girl she came to love disappeared from her forever.

Now there was Silas, and there was Laura. And when Carmilla spoke about waltzing it was in a way she never would have spoken to Ell, and she spun Laura carelessly and drew her in abruptly. When Laura looked at her it was with that same cautious adoration. And when their hands were linked together it felt so heart-wrenchingly familiar.

 


End file.
